Essaka Joshua’s research has taken her from The New York Public Library to archives in Scotland, tracing the intersections of Romantic theatre and disability studies. Her next stop is a little closer to home. A professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, Joshua was recently named a 2026-27 long-term fellow at the Newberry Library. In January, she will begin six months of research at the Chicago cultural institution, as the Richard H. Brown/William Lloyd Barber and Mellon Foundation Fellow, and immerse herself in the library’s research community and wide range of historical materials. “I’m excited to join this vibrant community of scholars working with the Newberry’s extensive European and American collections, and to have an extended period of research time to focus on this project,” she said. Over the past two decades, Joshua has focused her scholarship on disability studies, especially in her 2020 book Physical Disability in British Romantic Literature. She wrote a chapter for that book about theatre and disability, but removed it to keep the focus on literature. She also wrote about disability in her most recent book, Disability and the Gothic: The Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2026). She’s now further exploring the topic, and during her fellowship, she will draw from the Newberry’s rare books from the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the library’s collection of circus ephemera — posters, handbills, postcards, and more — for her research. Studying these artifacts from the circuses of 200 years ago will help answer her central research question: Where do we find disability in Romantic-era theatre? “Circuses then were extravaganzas — they’ve got horses, they’ve got acrobats, they’ve got all sorts of interesting tricks they use to get people through the door,” Joshua said. “What I’m finding is that disabled actors are moving between circus spaces and theatrical spaces, and that happens particularly for actors with dwarfism.” ‘Calling...